skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Would someone care to explain why Gangnam Style has become such a meme that tech startups are tempted to reuse it for marketing purposes? I mean I listened to the original song on Youtube and it didn't strike me as particularly worthy of listening to again and again, let alone bringing it up in conversations with other people.
New Android Maps API around the corner?
I don't know if I agree, only because while it isn't easy to find a technical cofounder, it's not impossible.

If it were easy, then everyone would do it. But if you work hard, attend lots of meetups, have a strong vision and are actively trying to push the business forward, it can't be impossible.
Focus on your breath going in and out. Every time you have a thought or an urge, notice it and bring yourself back to your breath.

From what I've heard so far, meditation is based on focusing on your body in order to quiet your mind. Are there other schools/techniques?
Thanks Taige!
EDTA is in many drinks and foods, not just Mountain Dew.
Netflix agrees to subtitle all films by 2014
LOLwork, a Bravo show about Cheezburger
Re-post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4644808
Persistence is the key to learning
It was done to Sarah Palin's Yahoo! mail, and the person who did it was prosecuted. (Rightfully, IMO, despite my feelings that Palin was not VP material.) My quick review on Wikipedia confirms my memory that it was a Stored Communication Act violation there, too.
Quora: What's a cool/useful skill that only takes five minutes to learn?
Teeth continuously remineralize in living humans, so this experiment wouldn't tell us anything useful.
So a cookie should be much worse than any sugary drink.

Basically, if you eat more than 0 sweets per day, it seems ridiculous to worry about sugary drinks.

If you get a raspberry seed stuck between your teeth, it should be much worse than a sugary drink.

Is there some coating effect I'm missing?
You are right to question this. There does seem to be a bit of a long standing myth that ALL javascript is bad for accessibility:
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/javascript-and-screenreade...

In this case though, from an accessibility point of view there are a few issues with the use of a link tag rather than the standard form 'input submit' or 'button'.

Problems include:

- It goes against user expectations of how the form functions

- User would not be able to submit the form while focus is on one of the inputs (although this could be remedied with more js)

- User would have to realise that this form does not have a standard submit button and realise that the link tag is the submit button (difficult for screen readers because there are no alt tags).

There is also an issue with usability for the few who don't have js enabled, as they will not be able to submit this form.
There's a dev plan link at the bottom of the pricing page, specifically for evaluating before you purchase. It watermarks your documents but other than that it's the real deal.
"What is the Game of Life"
Meeeeee, too. Me, too. Believe me, I tried.
Awesome! HackNY 2013 applications are now open. I was a fellow last summer, email me if you have any questions.
With regards to what your professor said regarding the performance of women in computer science programs:

I think that generally when there is a minority group within a program, that minority does relatively well. So many people choose their program because it's the status quo for their gender/race/social status/etc. The people who choose a program outside of what is expected of them probably do so because they have a strong aptitude in that area or are very interested and motivated by the subject.
Yes, I did read it. You misunderstood "my claim". I was not trying to imply that the study in question supports the idea that men make less than women, rather using it to demonstrate that not controlling all the other factors that effect income shows wildly varying results depending on which factors you do try to control and which you let effect it.

>women on the whole haven't reached equal status in any particular job or education level. For instance, women with a bachelor's degree had median earnings of $39,571 between 2006 and 2008, compared with $59,079 for men at the same education level, according to the Census.

Right, when you don't control for anything, you see a gap. The gap dissappears when you actually control for those factors. How does that contradict what I said?

>the "8% advantage", and all the differences quoted in this article, clearly do not control for the type of work performed.

Right, I was not suggesting that the pay gap is reversed, I am suggesting it is entirely accounted for by factors other than sexism. That you aren't complaining about men making less than women shows that you already accept that fact, you just only accept it when it is men making less, and discard it when it is women making less. Despite those two scenarios being just a case of controlling for different factors.
Because it's popular, so it gets clicks. It's popular because it's the fad of the moment. It's a fad because it snowballed. It snowballed because something has to be snowballing, as people want to pay attention to something, and they want to do that as part of a group. This is that something because it's cute, nicely produced, vaguely edgy but not threatening to anyone, and it got lucky.
> complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules... "design" and "organization" can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer

Self-organization is fascinating stuff; I suppose the economic corollary would be the "invisible hand." But in this example, is there not a "designer" setting the "simple rules" that make the self-organization possible?
Dear Google,

Please resume scanning books, old magazines and newspapers, which you "paused" some time back. It was sensible to take a wait-and-see approach until this decision was reached.

Thank you.
There's some effort underway to develop a vaccine against dental caries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine
I think the author has an excellent point about training one's ability to resist urges. Urges are spontaneous. They don't necessarily fit with our work flow. In fact, they interrupt it. Maybe a good analogy is the Time Management Matrix by Eisenhower (and popularized in Steven Covey's '7 Habits' book). Urges almost always present themselves as urgent tasks, but they aren't always important.

I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion that meditation will make you more productive. The evidence presented reminds me of a scenario from The Office, where Michael defends Monday morning movies by claiming they are more productive the rest of the day. Of course the reason they are more productive is because they have to be in order to recover the time spent watching a movie!

Rather, I think people don't realize how much spare time there is that gets wasted. Tasks expand to fill the time allotted. It's possible that meditation can help you identify those wasteful activities (urges) and address them appropriately.
I think you're making a good point. A lot of people reserve the word "mindfulness" for the sort of meditations you're describing here and use "meditation" for something more specific. But they're just names and I don't worry about them too much.

This all also reminds me that there are people who view "true yoga" as a sort of 24/7 meditation of movement, where the person strives to be aware of and deliberate about their movements all the time.
Ubuntu's cloud storage service hits Mac in beta, 5GB free
Don't blame lean startups for unemployment
I take regular tap water, make it half tap half coke. Works for me.
Sorry, this is hard for me to understand. You seem to be saying--and I apologize if I misinterpret you--that it is better to focus on dishwashing than to use otherwise idle mental time to plan one's future.

Is that really the case? What gains could one expect from focusing on dishwashing, only to take time away from some other activity to plan one's future?
A recently introduced second option consists
in using a resizable image as a button background
after having set its resizable and non-resizable
areas in code. Start by making a pill-shaped
background image in your graphic editor.

Not accurate. -[UIImage stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:topCapHeight] has been around since the first public SDK release. Although, I must say the -resizableImageWithCapInsets: methods added in iOS 5 and 6 are far more powerful.

Also, here are a bunch of UIButton subclasses that I think are pretty neat that demonstrate some of the techniques described in the article, plus others:

http://www.cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/bbutton

http://www.cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/psstoreb...

http://www.cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/gloss-ca...
Can you talk about what is difficult about it? I know that Windows game of life programs can use hashes of positions to compute new steps even for massive worlds very efficiently. Is the JS difficulty with the graphics on the canvas? Or something else?
Wait. Wait wait wait.

> Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance...

Great. Yes. Impulse control is key. Delayed gratification is part of how we define higher intelligence.

Meditation has what do with this, exactly?

> How [does meditation help]? By increasing your capacity to resist distracting urges.

This entire article is predicated by this leap of faith, which as far as I can see has little to no justification besides, "Of course it does!"

> Meditation teaches us to resist the urge of that counterproductive follow through.

One cannot just say things over and over to make them true.
> Would love to hear your suggestions on making this more rigorous.

That's easy:

1. A scientific study differs from an unscientific one in a number of ways, one of which is the presence of a control group.

2. To create a control for this hypothesis, create one MLS listing with photos, and another MLS listing without (if that's possible). See which one produces the desired result.

3. In lieu of (2) above, if that's not practical, do a classic Web A/B test -- create two versions of a web-based advertisement for a property, one with photos, one without (or one with more and one with fewer photos), each with a click-through. Then simply count clicks. This way, you don't have to track the outcomes, only logged clicks, which means you get results faster.

Item (3) above can also test varying advertising content, not just the photo issue. It's quite common to use A/B testing in Web design, so some of the infrastructure may already be present in the server. The key to the method is to randomly choose between two or three page designs when an URL request arrives at the server, and track the outcomes keyed to the designs.

This approach would give you a more scientific result, because it's based on a comparison in which the only thing changed is the thing being measured -- same property, different number of photos. Same property, different description.

Before closing, I have to tell my favorite real estate joke (which I invented). An agent visits a "distressed" property and is almost overwhelmed by the smell of the interior -- it literally smells as though there are mushrooms growing in the walls.

But our hero always thinks positively. He returns to the office and begins writing the listing. A long pause as he tries to think of a way to put a positive spin on the property. Finally a light bulb appears over his head, and he begins typing. The first word: "Breathtaking!"
Just because a browser supports those protocols, doesn't mean they are part of the web, which uses HTTP.
Fancy. Looks like a response, sort of, to Apple Maps. I wonder if this api will debut in updated maps apps for both Android and iOS? One can only dream.
Quite interestingly, Godaddy has it on the checkout page.
How do I know? I'm a techie. :-)

From a utilitarian perspective, most emails I don't need to keep around once I'm done reading them, so any copy is a backup (just in case I need it again, but not because I know I'll need it again). If I know I'll need it again, then the online copy is the instrument of record.

From a multiple copy standpoint, if I don't clear my browser cache, the online form is a backup, (one could "argue").
The good old Bernoulli vs Newton question
I knew that the proof was actually Matthew Cook's work, but I didn't realize it was invalid. Can you point me to a citation for that?
You're both right. I will make it clear I want to retain the IP while offering them a permanent license with a maintenance contract. That, and have a lawyer write it up.

The thing is I always want to retain IP when contracting out work, but that's because I'm always thinking about re-using or re-selling the work. I've been working on my own projects so long that I wasn't thinking about this from the customer's POV. They are not in the software business and just need their problem solved.
Wow, great product. Any examples of companies using it or are you still in the early stages?
It's clearly a clever trick; I'm impressed.
Or a Cypres.

http://www.cypres.cc
I figured caching the results of common patterns appearing in blocks of 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, etc. pixels which are surrounded by all 'off' pixels, you can easily skip many repetitive calculations.

---- ----
-oo- =\ -oo-
-oo- =/ -oo-
---- ----

----- ----- -----
--o-- ----- --o--
--o-- =\ -ooo- =\ --o--
--o-- =/ ----- =/ --o--
----- ----- -----

------ ------ ------
-oo--- -oo--- -oo---
-oo--- =\ -o---- =\ -oo---
---oo- =/ ----o- =/ ---oo-
---oo- ---oo- ---oo-
------ ------ ------

Since repeating patterns tend to turn up a lot on their own in CGoL they would end up cached, and large blocks of n cells could be computed in 1 move rather than requiring o(8n) time. That seems to be how Hashlife works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife
Does Twitter and Facebook Endorse and Encourage Reverse Social Media Hijacking?
Happiness ?
A human tooth submerged in Pepsi will actually dissolve completely in less than a week.
SR71's are beautiful & sexy
Mandatory link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal_Man
There have been quite a few threads like this on HN over the years (including one I made :-)). I wonder if there's some way of formalizing or aggregating the concept of visiting other companies, it seems there's an audience for it.
I don't know, I thought he explained it pretty well: during meditation, you practice resisting urges.

I'll admit that falls rather short of a doubleblindrandomlyassignedcontrolgrouplargesamplesizepeerreviewed study, but it does seem to be common sense that practicing something would make you better at it.
Live: Space Shuttle Endeavour's path through LA
Emmet Plugin for Sublime Text 2
I’m a big fan of the many plugins that are available for Sublime Text, and I’m specifically interested in plugins that speed up the already fast development times I get from Sublime. As such I’ve got a bunch of snippets setup, plugins that make very good use of multi-selections and more — I plan on making a blog post about my Sublime Text workflow in the coming days.
This is exactly the tool I've been waiting for; great work and good luck!
I don't have a link handy right this moment, but I understand that there is research indicating that the kind of multitasking you're describing is associated with a negative effect on mood, whereas acting mindfully is associated with an improved mood. Everyone is different, but I have also found this to be the case in my own life.

On a more practical note, I just find that I make more mistakes when I'm not paying attention to what I'm doing. And as for planning for the future, how much extra time would it really take if you saved it for after the dishes? A couple minutes?

All that said, I still listen to podcasts while doing chores...
Show HN: wodboard.com, The Strava of CrossFit
http://www.wodboard.com/

I am very happy to show the HN community my first startup. I am a one man development team working on something I am passionate about; self tracking and CrossFit. The options out there did not make me happy so I quit my job and am now trying to make wodboard into a business and the best tool for people who want to quantify their fitness.

Any comments welcome. The wodboard team is three people, one iPhone guy, one business guy and myself; design and webapp programming. We are based in Reykjavík, Iceland.

Backend: Flask, Heroku, SQLAlchemy
Frontend: Backbone.js written in CoffeeScript, Brunch for compiling

Many features planned :) Just wanted to get a basic version out there ASAP

Twitter @wodboard
"Opa" is the german word for grandpa, this makes reading about The Opa Framework somewhat funny..
It’s better to let yourself to be swallowed whole by your current activity (be it just doing the dishes) than to continue in the endless chatter of your mind. Doing the dishes can be fun if you pay attention to the textures, temperatures, smells and sounds. You can plan your future later, giving it full attention again. That’s the idea.
> There's a cost to everything.

My point is that when employees realize that strangers are being given options, it diminishes their value in attracting and holding onto employees. It undermines the loyalty factor, the incentive to be an employee.
Hey,

The short answer is: yes.

Feel free to check out http://verold.com, http://ptable.com, and http://happytables.com to see Kera in production.

We also have some really cool case studies in the works with more "high profile" startups in Toronto. That being said, we're still a very early-stage company.
You're right he doesn't back up the claim, but that's just because it's so well accepted by people who study this he didn't even think he had to.
Meditation is the focused practice of resisting distraction.

Have you ever tried sitting still for 15-30 minutes, doing nothing but breathing? Distractions come easily in this state. Sometimes it's your thoughts. Other times, it's very hard to resist the urge to get up and start moving. In order to successfully meditate, you need to deal with a wide variety of distractions and other obstacles.
Yeah no kidding. We're already staying at one of our customer's houses while we're there. So there's a ton of support for visiting startups.
> What gains could one expect from focusing

I don't want you to think that I am suggesting that you shift your "focus" from one activity to another, because that is ultimately is as same as a typical meditation routine. You are shifting your focus from whatever you were doing, to your focus on sitting idle and doing typical meditation.

That's not what I am suggesting with the dishwashing example. The meditation I am describing does not ask for you to focus .... instead, it asks for you to be "aware" and "be in present".

Here's the difference and here's what you can potentially gain:

When you are in the present washing dishes, you are training your mind to not be in the past and/or future. So now, if your mind is in present, than it does not matter if you are washing dishes or singing or dancing. The point is, that in present, you are closer to your true self and in present, you are more alert to the reality.

The mind constantly makes you wander either in the past or in the future and we generally don't and cannot stay in the present.

The example of doing your favorite activity (like running, exercising, singing, dancing etc) is important here because it is in these activities where you derive a whole lot of satisfaction and contentment for yourself. It has also been established that athletes usually find loosing themselves in their games at the moment of transcendence and we (the audience) have seen above-human or super natural acts come out of those moments (there is another subject of what audience derives out of watching such events, be that sports games, a movie, a concert etc, etc).

Hope you're following.
Speaking of Cosby, he helped finance van Peebles' film.
Thanks for the kind words. Are you in SF?
Attractive People make more money
Wish we could stop by in Atlanta - it's not too far from Toronto.
I would guess that the transposed letters are used to keep tabs on where their comments are live. It could look innocent, as if it were a human typo, but later the spammers could run a search and see which sites are trusting their comments in order to either edit them later or use their trusted account to post spam links.
This sounds like a rationalization for a behavior he already does. Likely the author was used to two spaces so, rather than change, he instead creates a framework of justification. Using his logic, why not three spaces? Or four?
There are two main forms of meditations, with a pretty much infinite number of variations: Concentration based meditation, and contemplative meditation. But it all bleeds together - contemplative practices require a certain level of concentration in order to be able to practice them.

Contemplative practices can range from meditation on a specific subject to general observation of your mind, thoughs, body, environment - this latter form is exemplified very well by mindfulness meditation (vipassana, from Theravada Buddhism, though when mindfulness meditation is taught in the West it is often pretty much cleansed of Buddhist material).

What the article describes sounds close to mindfulness meditation. In this case the goal is to quiet the mind, but not silence it or shut out external impression. The breath is used as an "anchor" that you return to in order to not let thoughts or feelings or observations drag you along, so that you can observe your thoughts in a detached manner, notice them, and move back to the breath.

Compare with some of the concentration practices which include focus on completely emptying your mind for extended periods of time.
Mike McCandless gives a good overview here: http://blog.mikemccandless.com/2012/07/lucene-400-alpha-at-l...

He has some other posts on there that do a deeper dive as well.
Didn't there used to be a tour thing after every Startup School?
> You get resizable controls

You also have that with images, so that does not apply.

You do get the rest, which has to be weighted against lower performances and higher maintainability costs.
Portland, sorry.
Hi Max. My Name is Robert Reiz. I am the founder of http://www.versioneye.com. That is my second Start-Up. I am coming at the same time to San Francisco, from Germany. I like your product, I like Canadians and of course I like Beer :-)
I will contact you.
Is that true? I remember Mythbusters disproving the myth that it would dissolve a tooth overnight.

Perhaps a week is too much time.
Those comments could be used to make automated spam filters less effective. Spammers could post comments that would normally be labeled as spam, but do not contain any URLs. Over time a spam filter would have a harder time distinguishing between cut-and-dry spam and real comments (assuming the admin is marking those spam comments as ham).

Also, I'm a fan of not allowing brand new accounts to post URLs in their comments. It's a no-brainer.
On Coding, Writing Structure, and Cottage-cheese hating ninjas
Workday IPO (WDAY) soars 70% on day 1
GNU MediaGoblin offers what you've been missing in a media-sharing system
Is this something really unique to tech? I see articles golf clapping efforts like this all the time and I wonder. This really isn't that different than printers or razors. If you are selling a service, give the 'product' away for as cheap as possible and upsell the service. The people who set up their own versions of your service were likely never going to be your customers anyway.